Fletchettes And Discus Fly

I just love that line! Yesterday during some down time I re-read through back issues of Marvel Comics' Power Man and Iron Fist from the mid-80s, and they really took me back. Some of the story lines may not work if they're told today, and more's the pity (such as a war between two obviously Muslim Middle Eastern countries that could develop into World War Three and only one issue out of the nine I'd read were a strictly speaking superhero/supervillain slugfest). When you're heroes for hire (cash up front), I suppose the high profile name making missions and foes of the Avengers and Fantastic Four can pass you by …

“LUKE CAGE: a child of the streets . . . DANIEL RAND: a son of the mystic city of K'un-Lun . . . Two men from different worlds – both reborn with strength and power beyond belief! And together, no one can stop them!” Does bring back memories; that and the ads from the mid 80s for popular video games, cereals, and other things kids go for and I went for growing up. And from seeing Jeffrey at school before with his friends, it's not that much different now (save the bigger predilection for body noises I think). Last night was Jeffrey's Cub Scout meeting which as usual I'm getting off work just as it ends, so we went to dinner for four at Taco John's and shared parts of the newspaper among us.

At least among Sarah, Jeffrey, and me. Sarah's eye was caught by the photo of a dance troupe performing in a local church. Jeffrey and I paid attention to the editorial page in the Minot Daily News about the search for a new city manager and a political cartoon with President Obama and Pope Francis asking their respective advisers how to address the other … the President is told “His Holiness” while Pope Francis is told, because of how he words the question, “President Putin”. Vladimir Putin, current president of the Russian Federation who seems to be at the head of news outside the United States for the current Ukrainian issues and other bearish things.

It's not something stirring to think of, the United States being in a global decline in terms of power, influence, and respect. (Putting on my historian's spectacles here.) The fact that we're all bipedal carbon-based forms of life is just not enough to have a peaceful loving world; it hasn't been since the Tower of Babel back in Genesis. And whether you agree or even partly agree or not with Van Loon that what's helped the USA climb to the top globally is “throw[ing] overboard a great deal of ancestral ballast” (I've read arguments that by not being so historically minded we are kept down too), you can't deny that the world as it is today is a deal better than it could have been had the villains won.

Though wars and rumors of wars, David